Over My Dead Body
by MirrorDede
Summary: See Elliot's woobie moment, B-Rabbit-possessed Oz and more as the whole merry crew disrupts Yura Isla's ceremony in their own way. Starts off as a serious attempt at predicting the next chapter, and then dissolves into sheer and utter crack.


**Summary:** See Elliot's woobie moment, B-Rabbit-possessed Oz and more as the whole merry crew disrupts Yura Isla's ceremony in their own way. Starts off as a serious attempt at predicting the next chapter, and then dissolves into sheer and utter crack.

**Words: **1210

**Rating:** T for violence

**Writer's Note:** Spoilers for chapter 56! Thanks to total_alias for beta reviewing.

()

"Mother?" Elliot saw his mother standing over his friend Leo, a knife in her thin, frail hand.

"I am so glad you are here to perform this miracle with me, Son," Duchess Nightray said, peaceful smile on her face.

"W-what miracle?" gasped Elliot, his eyebrows arched sadly. Then he saw the knife in her hand, and screamed, "_Put that knife down, Mother_!"

"Oh, Elly," said the duchess calmly, "we're going to sacrifice this person to the Abyss, for the sake of gaining paradise."

Elliot looked at Leo lying still on the platform and his eyes widened in horror.

"Y-You can't kill Leo!" he cried out, grabbing the knife out of his mother's hand.

The duchess looked offended.

"Whyever not? He's but a servant, Elly."

"He's…he's my best friend!" The young Nightray heir fought back tears. "You can't kill my best friend!" He covered his eyes with his hand and sobbed.

"You would go against your own mother's wishes?" The duchess let a scowl creep on to her normally kind face. "You would go against the pride of the Nightray family, for this, _this servant_?"

His heart aching, he threw himself on Leo's chest.

"If you kill my best friend, it'll be _over my dead body_!" He dropped the knife on the floor and buried his face in Leo's chest. He sobbed for a moment, and then froze, remembering _Holy Knight_, remembering the advice he'd given Oz - the motto he'd lived by for so long. _It's no good if I throw my life away to protect someone else, no matter how dear they are to me. What the hell am I doing?_

"Very well then," the duchess said, picking up the knife. "You can serve as the sacrifice just as well."

Elliot looked up, and saw his mother standing above him, ready to plunge the knife into his back.

()

From out of nowhere, Xerxes Break dropped like a ninja onto Duchess Nightray, and pinned her to the floor, knocking the knife out of her hand.

"Now then, Gilbert-kun," he said, "please examine her chest for a contractor's seal."

"B-Break," Gilbert stuttered.

"Now don't be useless again, Gilbert."

"B-But her c-ch-ch-." Gilbert's cheeks flushed.

"Look if it's a problem for you, Gilbert-kun, _I'll _loosen her shirt and you can look." Break gritted his teeth and gave Gilbert a dirty look as he muttered, "You know I can't see now, for God's sake, so don't be difficult."

"What is the meaning of this?" Duchess Nightray protested, as Break pulled back her cloak and shirt with his hand, revealing plainly to Gilbert, and Elliot as well, the incuse of an illegal contractor.

"Mother!" cried Elliot. "How could you be an illegal contractor?"

"Oh, this mark?" she said, pointing to the incuse and then covering herself with her cloak. "It's just a special brand I got when I joined the Faith."

"What else happened when you joined, this 'Faith,' Duchess-sama?" asked Break.

"Ah well," she said, her eyes looking skyward, "each week I take a sacrament, drinking some special juice from the Abyss, and recite an incantation. It's such a peaceful ritual…"

Gilbert and Break looked at each other, horrified.

()

While all this was happening, Oz was in the ceremony room, popping Humpty Dumpty bubbles with his scythe. _There are so many_, he thought. He noticed that with each bubble he popped, another child would scream and fall. If Oz were feeling like himself, there was no way he would have allowed these children to suffer the damage he was inflicting on their chain. But he wasn't in his right mind: he was red-eyed Oz, filled with the manic power of B-Rabbit.

Then suddenly, all the children became unable to use Humpty Dumpty, and became just children again. Oz didn't realize it was because Break was using Mad Hatter to suppress Humpty Dumpty's original contractor – Duchess Nightray.

The threat abated for the moment, Oz turned his attention to Yura Isla.

"So, you're rather fond of money are you?" said Oz, leering at the creeper from behind his bangs.

"Oh, yes indeed," admitted the bug-eyed man, thinking of all the Jack Vessalius merchandise he could buy with cold hard cash.

"I hope you've made a last will and testament, then," said Oz, taking a swing with his scythe. B-Rabbit's power surged within him and Yura Isla screamed out in horror as the giant black rabbit shadow fell upon him. In one fell swoop, Yura's head flew off his body and in through the window where Vincent and Echo were waiting for just the right opportunity to break the seal on the sealing stone. Yura's head landed in Echo's lap. Nonplussed, she blinked once, then tasted a drop of his blood.

"Echo does not like the taste of this man's blood."

Vincent picked up Yura's head by its hair, threw it up in the air toward the ceremony room, then took aim with his pistol, blowing a hole through his left cheek. The bloody head went flying and Oz whacked it with the side of his scythe. It flew across the room in Gilbert's direction (for Gilbert and Break had just arrived in the room), and the raven-haired man gave the head a swift kick and sent it flying over top of Alice.

Alice wanted to get up but she was feeling quite heavy due to the suppression of her power – partly due to the presence of the sealing stone, and partly due to the fact that Oz had taken most of her power away for his own use. _My manservant is using my power without my permission!_ she thought, gritting her teeth.

Oz and Gilbert continued to volley Yura's head back and forth across the room, until the red-robed Baskerville pretenders finished their huddle. By the time the cult members were ready to play the game, Xerxes Break had strung a volleyball net across the room.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Vincent snuck in and considered his options._ I can't just break the seal directly while all these people are watching_, _as that would incriminate me,_ _but I could possibly trick Oz into doing it_. Vincent coaxed some of the red-robed children over by the seal and then encouraged them to release their humpty dumpties. They were able to do so, since Break was no longer holding down Duchess Nightray. The Duchess was about to serve Yura's head across the net, while Break had donned a striped referee's uniform and sported a whistle in his mouth.

But before psycho Oz could attack the humpty dumpties and thereby accidentally break the nearby seal, Jack appeared in Oz's body.

"Oh, hear me speak, you people," Jack announced grandly, to the assembled crowd.

Break blew his whistle and everyone turned to face Jack.

"I beg you not to break these seals," Jack said. "Rather, I command you! For if you break seals such as these, you will find the rotten, decomposed flesh of my own body within. This will surely disgust you greatly, possibly even causing you to vomit."

Then Jack observed the bloody Yura Isla head that someone was holding, and the various Yura Isla body parts strewn around the room (thanks to Oz's scythe-work).

"Oh," he said, revolted. "Never mind. Carry on!"

**END**

P.S. Okay, yeah I didn't really resolve anything, but you know Retrace 57 won't either, ne?


End file.
